* * * * *

Perhaps it was a sign of advancing years and weakening mind that this
fine specimen of a fine service felt that, when flying some thousands
of feet above the earth, he was nearer to Lenore in Heaven. All his
science and sad experience had failed to deprive him of a
sub-conscious belief in an actual place "above," a material Hereafter
beyond the sky, and, when clouds cut him off from sight of the earth,
he had a quaint, half-realized feeling of being in the ante-room of
the Great House of many mansions, wherein dwelt Lenore.

Yes, when flying, Colonel John Decies felt that he was nearer to the
woman he had lost nearly a quarter of a century before. In one sense
he may have been so, for he was a very reckless airman, and never in
greater danger than when engaged in what he called "ground-scouring"
among the air-current haunted, mist-haunted mountains of the Border.
He anticipated an early Border-war and realized that here would be a
great opportunity for a keen-sighted and iron-nerved medical airman to
locate, if not to pick up, overlooked wounded. Here, too, would be a
double need of such service in a country where "the women come out to
cut up what remains"! Imagine, too, cavalry reconnaissances and bad
casualties a score of miles from medical help ...

Whether it brought him nearer in any sense to Lenore de Warrenne, it
brought him nearer to her son, on one of those hundred-mile circular
"scours" which he practised when opportunity offered, generally
accompanied by a like-minded officer of the R.A.M.C., to which Corps
he had become a kind of unofficial and honorary instructor in "First-
Aid Flying" at the Kot Ghazi flying-school, situate in the plains at
the foot of the "Roof of the World".